Sugarland photo by Jennifer Tzar, courtesy of UMG Nashville.

When Sugarland released its debut single during this week in 2004, the band was engaging in a bit of wishful thinking. Looking back a half-dozen years, it now appears the act was setting itself up for success.

The song, of course, was “Baby Girl,” in which a wannabe musician corresponds with family members about her dreams and ambitions. During the first part of the song, she begs for money, lamenting that she’s “so broke that it ain’t funny.” But she makes a transformation by the close of “Baby Girl.” The band holes up in the Ritz-Carlton and happily observes that it’s “so rich that it ain’t funny.”

Now Jennifer Nettles and Kristian Bush are pretty much required to sing “Baby Girl” at every concert, and they’re inevitably aware that they’ve lived out the lyrics they penned when they were still trying to make it.

“The irony isn’t lost on me,” Jennifer told The Indianapolis Star. “As writers, Kristian and I always say our creative mind is far ahead of the present conscious mind. Then you look back to an album or to a song and say, ‘Oh, yeah. I saw that coming in my life.’ I think that song is a wonderful self-fulfilling prophecy. If nothing else, it’s testimony to the power of repeating a mantra over and over and putting it out into the universe.”

It’s not exactly the only transition they’ve made. When “Baby Girl” came out, Sugarland was actually a trio, though Kristen Hall decided to leave the band 17 months later.

The duo’s next album, The Incredible Machine, comes out Oct. 19.

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